The computer, typically one with a voice or at least a display and ability to answer plain spoken questions, is asked to answer plot critical questions. The computer will give one of three answers: an accurate answer based on available data and number crunching, a Bat Deduction that is unerringly accurate despite lack of data... or admitting that it lacks the info needed to answer the question. That said, it may still make amazingly accurate predictions based on what limited data it does have.

Examples:

In episode 43 of Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan, the villains create and hand out devices that can answer any question, with the hope of making local kids rely on them for all their knowledge and become too stupid to resist them as a result. They end up being Hoist by Their Own Petard as Vul Eagle manages to get one of the devices and uses it to find where the villains are hiding. (However, when he tries it again later, it doesn't work because the villains have put up a shield around their van.)

When Captain Dallas tried to get information out of Mother (the Nostromo's computer) about the title monster he got the "Insufficient Data" type response.

Dallas: Request evaluation of current procedures to terminate alien

Mother: Unable To Compute

Dallas: Request options for possible procedure

Mother: Available Data Insufficient

Dallas: What are my chances?

Mother: Does Not Compute

When Ripley tried the same thing later, Mother's first response was just as unhelpful but Ripley got lucky and got some Accurate Answers.

In The Thing, MacReady asks the base computer what The Thing would do if it escapes out of the arctic, and it projects total global infection in a matter of weeks.

In Sunshine the cast asked the computer, Icarus, whether their plan to dump a dark matter bomb into the sun to reignite it would work. Which it said would be impossible to compute as the variables increase too quickly the closer the simulation got to the sun. Because of this uncertainty they decide to make a detour and get the bomb from the Ghost Ship Icarus 1 and double their chances.

In The Fly (1986 with Jeff Goldblum), once Dr. Brundle realizes he's not really 100% human any more he asks the computer what's going on, and it exposits that he's fused with fly DNA and will eventually mutate into a hideous creature.

Babylon5: Commander Sinclair did this once in an early episode. He started with a straightforward keyword search. The computer gives him some useful data. Eventually he accidently asks a rhetorical question to which the computer gives the standard "Unknown" response.

Done often on Time Trax with Lambert asking SELMA, his credit-card-sized computer programmed with all knowledge of the 20th century, to extrapolate from known data into unknown territory. She is always reluctant to do this and gives percentages of how right she might be.

In episode 43 of Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan, the villains create and hand out devices that can answer any question, with the hope of making local kids rely on them for all their knowledge and become too stupid to resist them as a result. They end up being Hoist By Their Own Petard as Vul Eagle manages to get one of the devices and uses it to find where the villains are hiding. (However, when he tries it again later, it doesn't work because the villains have put up a shield around their van.)

Done often on Time Trax with Lambert asking SELMA, his credit-card-sized computer programmed with all knowledge of the 20th century, to extrapolate from known data into unknown territory. She is always reluctant to do this and gives percentages of how right she might be.

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